JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The headlines wonder if Nasa has found life on Mars. Scientists have detected enormous amounts of methane from Mars. Evidence of life, possibly. Proof of life, not.

“But methane can be made by geological processes too. Huge amounts of the gas seep from deep ocean vents and from volcanoes without the help of life. What is intriguing is that for similar processes to do this on Mars, the planet must be far more geologically active than scientists thought. So far Nasa has no way of knowing whether its methane plumes are the collective emissions of billions of microbial Martians, or some more mundane process involving rocks and moisture. . .”

Sailors fighting in the dance hall. Oh man, look at those cavemen go. It’s the freakiest show.

Back on earth, paleontologist Peter Ward argues that nature is not intent on achieving harmonious balance, but is bent on self-destruction.

“The story of life on earth, in Ward’s reckoning, is a long series of suicide attempts. Four of the five major mass extinctions since the rise of animals, Ward says, were caused not by meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions, but by bacteria, and twice, he argues, the planet was transformed into a nearly total ball of ice thanks to the voracious appetites of plants. In other words, it’s not just human beings, with our chemical spills, nuclear arsenals, and tailpipe emissions, who are a menace. The main threat to life is life itself. “Life is toxic,” Ward says. “It’s life that’s causing all the damn problems.” Ward, a paleontologist at the University of Washington and a scholar of the earth’s great extinctions, calls his model the Medea Hypothesis, after the mythological Greek sorceress who killed her own children.”

You walk past a cafe but you don’t eat when you’ve lived too long. See, Bowie covers almost everything.